Full(o)bloG

The Visual Editor Project is proud to announce version 1.0 of the Eclipse Visual Editor. Features in the Eclipse Visual Editor include:

* SWT and Swing support
* Full two-way editing of Java and the visual model
* Advanced graphical editors for Swing's GridBagLayout and SWT's GridLayout
* Windows and Linux/GTK support
* Full support for Eclipse 3.0.1

The Eclipse Visual Editor version 1.0 is available through the Eclipse Update Manager under the Eclipse.org update site and from the Eclipse Visual Editor Project download site.

In addition, the latest versions of EMF and GEF are required. Both of these are available at the Eclipse update site and at the above download URL.
You can also read about the changes on the New and Noteworthy page.

ciuaz

ecco la classica lista della spesa di programmilli per linux trovati in rete questa settimana (o aggiornati):

* rubrica: utile alla gestione dei propri contatti, permette di importarli ed esportarli in diversi formati ed è in italiano!

* nuova versione per sodipodi, il clone di illustrator ed affini. In questo aggiornamento:

This release incorporates for the first time path composition operations (union, intersection and subtraction) and new, calligraphic pen based freehand drawing

* meld è un programma che permette di fare il diff tra due o più file (e da questa versione tra il contenuto di due directory), l'interfaccia è molto pulita e facilmente personalizzabile.

* se usate hylafax per la gestione dei vostri fax allora gfax è il plugin che fa per voi.

The GFAX project aims to provide a free front end to the various facsimile programs available for Linux and other operating systems that use the GNOME project. GFAX provides the familiar "pop up" window and phone book support when one "prints" to a "fax" printer.

E se la vostra distribuzione preferita è Fedora, ecco il suo yum server:

[gfax]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://gfax.cowlug.org/gfax-yum

* se avete la necessità di preparare brochure e pubblicazioni per la stampa, ma non avete i fondi per Xpress fate un salto sul sito di Passepartout:

Passepartout is an Open Source* Desktop Publishing* application for the X Window System*. The goal of this project is to create a system capable of producing pre-press material of professional quality, but also to be a useful tool for any enthusiast with access to a printer. The main focus is on making it easy for the user to create publications with a flexible layout, typical examples being magazines, brochures and leaflets.

se invece siete affezionati a KDE ed alle librerie QT fate un salto sul sito di Scribus che in questa nuova release aggiunge

# dded CMYK and Transparency Preview to the Print Preview, with the ability to preview each CMYK individually
# Enabled/updated Transparencies/Alpha Channels in various formats
# Drop Caps ability
# Context Sensitve menu for pages added and items updated.
# Added calculator to the floating-point spinbox fields and added ability to use any of the four units of measurement (pica,pt,mm,in) on the fly.
# Updated PDF and Postscript export functions
e molto altro

* nuova versione di conglomerate, l'editor per DocBook, di Gnome, nulla di nuovo.. solo bugfix.

* se usate un cellulare con bluetooth e volete mandare un sms a qualcuno direttamente da Fedora è stato fatto il porting di phonemgr!

* nuova milestone (M7) per eclipse, l'ide multipiattaforma e multilinguaggio supportato ufficialmente da IBM.

* sempre a riguardo di IDE non posso non ricordare l'aggiornamento di Anjuta, ide C/C++ scritto in GTK che sta riscuotendo notevole consensi dalla comunità GNOME.

* è uscita la nuova versione di inkscape l'editor SVG opensource:

Inkscape is an open source SVG editor with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, Visio, etc. Supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, node editing, svg-to-png export, grouping, and more. Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a fully XML, SVG, and CSS2 compliant SVG drawing tool. Additional planned work includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing a lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension mechanism, and establishment of a friendly, open, community-oriented development processes.

ciauz

è stato pubblicato il numero di febbraio di php|architect, in questo numero:

Profiling PHP Applications
If you program PHP professionally, there is little doubt that, at some point, you will need to improve the performance of an application. If you work on a high-traffic site, this might be a daily or weekly endeavor for you; if your projects are mainly intranet ones, the need may arise less frequently. At some point, though, most applications need to be “retuned” in order to perform as you want them to. PHP author George Schlossnagle guides you through the ins and outs of profiling PHP applications.

Writing PHP Extensions: Managing Arrays
PHP arrays are one of the best inventions since sliced bread—but they are not necessarily easy to deal with when you're writing a PHP extension in C. Join Wez Furlong for an in-depth look at how the Zend Engine makes it easy for you to manipulate hash tables without having to write a mountain of specialized code.

Caching Techniques for the PHP Developer
Caching is an excellent technique for speeding up your application by saving the result of complex operations in memory for later usage. As Bruno Pedro shows you in this article, websites can take advantage of caching on many different levels to attain higher scalability and performance levels—and PHP offers a wide array of caching capabilities.

Write SMS Applications With PHP and Gnokii
SMS—shorthand for Short Message Service—is the standard used by cellular phone networks worldwide to allow their customers to exchange small text messages using their handsets. Despite its limitations, SMS is very popular with cell phone users—and it has rapidly become a widely-used bridge between the Internet and mobile users. Eric Persson shows you how you can build your own SMS gateway using nothing more than PHP, an open-source application called Gnokii and a Nokia phone connected to your computer.

Offline News Management with PHP-GTK
Although many Content Management Systems are entirely web-based, there is something to be said for the convenience of a native GUI application that runs on your client computer regardless of whether you have a connection to the server or not. Until now, the creation of such applications was outside of the abilities of many developers, due to the very specialized know-how required and duplication of code involved. Morgan Tocker shows you how can overcome these problems by using that most-often forgotten of PHP extensions—PHP-GTK—to build a fully-functional GUI-based news manager.

The Need For Speed
The ever growing popularity of the web is putting a continually growing stress on the software and hardware used to power the common website. In this article, PHP core developer Ilia Alshanetsky helps you combat the growing server loads and increase your web serving capacity without resorting to costly hardware upgrades.

ciuaz

Dopo l'ottimo Ampoliros i ragazzi dell'italianissima Solarix hanno creato un nuovo framework in php:

Carthag is an open source applications platform written in PHP 5, making full use of the new language features. Being distributed with the GPL license, Carthag is free to use and distribute.

Carthag's main purpose is to bring PHP at the Enterprise level. This is achieved by using new PHP 5 OOP features, adopting the best Design Patterns and bringing some other platforms ideas (in particular Java) to Carthag.

Differently from other PHP based platforms, Carthag is designed to be used in all types of applications, even client ones, and not only as a web scripting system. As soon as PHP-GTK extension with GTK 2 support is ported to PHP 5, you will be able to even build complex client applications with GUI.

Thanks to threading (concurrent processes to be exact) and server sockets, something like Java servlet + MVC is soon to be implemented under Carthag.

A Carthag based application server already exists and it is called Ampoliros, but as of now it is under a deep refactoring phase in order to take advantage of being now based on Carthag.

Main features

* Entirely OOP
* Rigorous code organization (like Java)
* Implementation of design patterns like Observer, Factory, DAO, etc.
* Support of threading/concurrent processes
* Classes for Server Sockets
* Class loader and class autoload interceptor
* Security manager
* Database abstraction
* DAO base
* Dom/Sax Xml manipulation

ciauz

E' stato pubblicato il numero di novembre di php|architect, questo mese si parla di:

Introduction to Version Control with CVS
CVS is one of those tools that everyone seems to use. It drives every project on SourceForge, and is used on numerous other projects, including PHP and PEAR. CVS also, however, seems to bring fear to the eyes of those who don't use it and don't understand it. This month Dejan takes you on an introductory tour through the CVS system, showing you how to use it, how it works, and why you care. Pay attention--your code will thank you.

Object Overloading in PHP
Everyone knows that PHP4's object model is not a full implementation, and that PHP5 will offer a vastly more complete system. But did you know that one of the coolest features of PHP5's object model is available in PHP4? The overload extension allows you to capture calls to methds that don't exist in your objects, and to catch attempts to read and write non-existant properties. Once caught, you have full control over how those calls and accesses are handled. Alessandro shows you the ins and outs, and how you can implement traditional method overloading.

Introduction to PHP-GTK
PHP-GTK is an area of PHP that has been largely ignored by the masses. A few (very good) desktop applications exist that have been written in this flavour of our favourite server-side language, but you can almost count them on your fingers and toes. Eric wants to change that. This article takes you from A to Z in the PHP-GTK model, and leaves you with a pretty cool example application to learn from.

An Introduction to SQLite
SQLite is being hailed as one of the most exciting parts of PHP5. As an embedded database engine that is bundled with PHP5, it will make it possible to use SQL for almost anything, without worrying about the availability of a database server and client libraries on target systems. John shows you how it works, and what you can do with it.

Working with PEAR::XML_Serializer
XML is two-sided. It is an incredibly descriptive and usable method of transferring information, but the XML API's out there manage to make it hard to work with. Then along comes PEAR::XML_Serializer. All of a sudden, XML is easy--you're writing XML, and you don't even care. It's a beautiful place to be, and Stephan's going to take you there.

Implementing Web Server Load Management
What happens when you get an unexpected number of hits on your site? Does your server tip over? Do you get another ulcer? No way--you manage the load and think about going out for lunch! Join Rodrigo as he uses concepts like system-wide sessions and queue theory to describe a load throttling mechanism he developed for a University registration system

ciuaz

dopo quasi un anno di attesa è stata rilasciata la versione 1.0 di php::GTK, questa versione sarà (la prima e) l'ultima a supportare php 4 e GTK 1, infatti è già in lavorazione php::GTK 2 che userà nativamente php 5 e GTK 2.
Per leggere maggiori info sul progetto vi consiglio un giro sul suo wiki.

ciauz

e rieccomi con qualche links interessante dal mondo del php:

Zend Studio 3.0
è stata rilasciata la versione 3.0 beta del famoso editor della Zend, inoltre se vi iscrivete al beta testing ufficiale avrete uno sconto del 22% sulla versione definitiva.

MozPHP
mozPHP è una plugin per mozilla che permette di utilizzare PHP senza installare un webserver, il browser utilizzerà infatti in maniera nativa le php sapi per accedere a tutte le funzioni che il linguaggio mette a disposizione. Direi un'ottima altenativa all'accoppiata php-gtk.

PHP tutorial
da IBM un tutorial su come fare web data analysis con php, l'articolo è molto esauriente e ricco di codice ben spiegato.

ciuaz

l'8 ed il 9 maggio si svolgerà ad amsterdam l'ennesima conferenza internazionale su PHP, piatti forti dei talk saranno:

- PHP 5.0
- PEAR
- PHP-GTK
- PHP-XML

per maggiori informazioni c'è il sito ufficiale ;)

ps
non è che qualcuno mi vuole accompagnare? pagandomi anche il biglietto è inteso! ;P

ciuaz